The nearest known prior art to the present invention is the method and apparatus disclosed in Lee, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,549,408 which has common inventorship with the present invention and is commonly assigned with the present invention. The references cited in U.S. Pat. No. 4,549,408 are of note. Lee, et al. disclose ice maker apparatus including a triple walled stationary evaporator drum disposed with a plurality of equally spaced radially outwardly projecting ridges. Evenly distributed water flow over the drum freezes as a layer of ice on the freezing surface of the drum and the ice is intermittenly removed into broken and sized cubes by a sequentially functioning cutter assembly.
Lee, et al. note that prior art ice makers require the provision of some form of heat to the evaporator drum surface in the removal of ice and that such procedure is energy inefficient since a tremendous amount of energy is expended to freeze, heat, and refreeze the surface upon which the ice is formed. While this statement is generally true, the present invention is in exception in that the mass of material to be heated is very small, the heating cycle is very short, and the transition from freezing, to heating, to freezing, is very rapid, as later shown.
The present invention will produce well shaped "dry" cubes of ice and in quantities much greater than the prior art apparatus of equal size as disclosed in the prior patents.